Adventurer Vocations

The Adventurer in Chivalry & Sorcery is literally everyone else in the world! There are lots more callings one might follow besides the vocations of Fighter, Thief, Priest, or Magus. The ‘Adventurer’ is a character vocation that enables the role-player to design a unique character type. Let us consider a few examples:

Seaman ..................................................Travelling Merchant

Travelling Miller .............................................Wine Merchant

Troubadour .....................................Wandering Player (actor)

Master Miner .....................................Wandering Strong man

Weaponsmith .....................................Fortifications Engineer

Innkeeper ...........................................Holy Relics Salesman

Barber-chirurgeon ..................................................Physician

Scholar .........................................................Gold/silversmith

Master Bowman ..........................................................Herald

Tinker .........................................................................Farmer

Remember the list is endless.

Designing the Adventurer Character

The rules for do-it-yourself character vocation designing are simple, straight forward, and few in number

• It is the Gamemaster’s world, so discuss your character with him and you will need to agree about what your PC’s primary skills should be.
• Focus on what your character is going to do with his life. What is his occupation? What should he learn? What is he likely to be able to learn in his early years, given his situation in life?
• Pick two related skills to be the character’s specialised fields of knowledge. These skills must be bought with a Mastery slot and are learned at +20 PSF% with appropriate bonus levels. The Attributes for these skills determine the primary and secondary Attributes in the vocation and the rate at which additional Mastery slots are obtained.
• The character then selects a further eight skills to form the specialisation skill’s categories (or related categories). These become part of his Primary (Vocational) skills and are learnt at +10 PSF% and any appropriate bonus levels. By devoting a Mastery slot to learning them, he can enjoy +20 PSF% and any appropriate bonus levels.
• A character’s Secondary Skills consist only of the skills he learnt in his youth because of his social background, etc., or any skills that are peripherally relevant to the character’s vocation.
• The Gamemaster may veto any of the player’s choices and suggest others appropriate to the character type. Also, he may allow more skills in the vocational and secondary skills.

Chivalry & Sorcery systems enable you to design a character that can be literally anything! That character should make sense and be created in the spirit of the rules. Chivalry & Sorcery has a social system in order to give structure to the world, something solid and tangible, a 'real' world despite the fantasy elements, the magick, the High Adventure. Since a character comes from a definite background, that background affects what he might learn, what he can choose to do. The Gamemaster is within his rights to say an escaped Serf has no chance of learning skills that would start him off as a fledgling diplomat. And that is how it is done! Not at all hard, really and a new character vocation is born. Have fun inventing your own!

Changing Your Vocation

The may come a time in a characters career when they might wish to change their vocation. For example, from being a crusading man-at-arms to a monk (Cadfael). The procedure would involve the character spending three months in downtime assuming the mantle of the new vocation. After this period, they will acquire 3 vocational skills at level 1 selected from their new vocation. Any existing skills they have which are from the new vocation, can be promoted from secondary to vocational, gaining +10 PSF%. Any existing skills not from the new vocation, are demoted from vocational to secondary and lose their +10 PSF% bonus.

Mastery Bonuses for old skills are not lost and the reduction of the vocational bonus reflects the lack of use or requirement of that skill in the new vocation.